Thursday, April 27, 2017

Malaysian opposition figure calls PM Najib a Crook, faces suit...

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, who as “Malaysian Public Official 1” is the target of what was said to be the largest single action ever brought under the US’s Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative, is suing Democratic Action Party National Spokesman Tony Pua for calling him a thief.

The prime minister’ legal action against Pua has set off considerable derision in Kuala Lumpur, where allegations against Najib for the looting of the state-backed 1Malaysia Development Bhd. have been widely circulated for two years. The now-moribund fund, set up as an investment vehicle in 2009 guaranteed by the Finance Ministry, is believed to have lost as much as RM43 billion (US$11 billion) through mismanagement and theft, with more than US$1 billion diverted into Najib’s own accounts.

Singapore has closed the branches of two Swiss banks believed to have been conduits for the funds and jailed several private bankers. Swiss authorities are demanding that 1MDB and the Malaysian government account for US$4 billion believed to have been laundered illegally into Swiss banks.

In an April 6 Facebook posting protesting an unprecedented action by the government to allow the opposition Parti Islam se-Malaysia to introduce a bill on sharia law, Pua said the plan to introduce the bill was promoted with the political intent to hang on to power by appealing to Malay sentiment despite the fact that Najib “is the most unpopular prime minister in the history of Malaysia” and that the decision to push the PAS bill was “designed as a political scheme to distract Malaysians from the crimes that the prime minister has committed, mainly the fact that the prime minister has stolen billions of ringgit from 1mdb, the wholly owned subsidiary of the government of Malaysia.” Full story...

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